


Black, White or Grey

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 05:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2298038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair gets introspective</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black, White or Grey

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday, prompt 'shades of grey'

 

Black, White or Grey

by Bluewolf

Sometimes Blair just didn't understand how Jim Ellison saw the world.

Perhaps it was because of the way he was brought up, perhaps it was because of his years in the army, perhaps it was because he was a detective, but Jim tended to see things in black and white. Wrong or right. Law-breaking or law-abiding.

Perhaps it was even because he was a sentinel, with a strongly developed instinct to protect the innocent from those who thought only of their own desires, their own greed. Though Alex Barnes had been a sentinel - no. She had the five senses people always thought of as _the_ senses heightened, but she had none of the other heightened instincts that a sentinel had to have. She had no sense of right or wrong, no sense of wanting to protect, no sense of unselfishness... probably, despite her attempt to seduce Jim, no particularly strong parental sense.

But even as he considered that, Blair had to admit - in the privacy of his thoughts - that his mother also saw things in black and white. To Naomi's mind, the things she rejected - for whatever reason - were totally black; the things she embraced were absolutely white. Luckily none of the causes she had embraced over the years were particularly criminal, though the people she'd protested against over the years undoubtedly considered those protests criminal and would have been happy to see the protesters locked up for life.

So why, he wondered, did he normally see things in shades of grey? Certainly, while exposing him to the things she embraced and telling him that the things she rejected were bad, Naomi had also encouraged him to be his own person, and from the time he was sixteen he had been exposed to the values of his various lecturers. Had they had more influence over the way he thought than he had realised, back in his teenage years? Blair decided that Eli Stoddard almost certainly had.

Was it as a result of accepting many of Eli's values, because he so admired the man, that made Blair see both sides of everything? _Almost_ everything, he corrected himself. He didn't see any point in taking 'recreational' drugs, couldn't understand why anyone would want to - hell, he didn't like taking _medicinal_ drugs. But tribal shamans sometimes used hallucinogens. However, those were tools - the resulting 'high' was not the same thing at all as a recreational high. Looking at it objectively he decided that even the use of drugs was something he could see as grey - or greyish - depending on why those drugs were used. Theft, depending on what it was - he could understand the motive of a desperately poor person stealing food to feed his or her family, even stealing money to buy food or pay the rent; but not the greed of a rich man who already had far more money than he could possibly spend, but who wanted to be even richer. And there could never be a good reason for something like murder.

But yet, again... Technically, assisting the suicide of someone terminally ill who wanted to die with dignity counted as murder...

No. Not _murder_ , although... helping a person in that condition to end his suffering was illegal, while the irony was that it was considered kindness to euthanize a pet that was suffering and couldn't be cured.

Blair sighed. It seemed that there was nothing that he saw in straight black and white; he saw everything in shades of grey.


End file.
